You Don't Need Permission to Fly
"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility."
(Martha Nussbaum).
I've been re-reading Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness. It is a profoundly intelligent book, humanly intelligent in a way that balances reason and emotion. Nussbaum's argument in the book makes complete sense to me from an autistic perspective. First of all, there is the way that she explains the ancient, Platonic urge to exercise a rational control over chance and contingency as a condition of human freedom. As someone who has argued for Rational Freedom in my philosophical and political work, I am very much located in that tradition which associates the exercise of reason and the attainment of freedom. My work does indeed seek a genuine law and order which establishes regularity and stability against an anarchic chaos. So far, so rational and Platonic. And autistic. But, secondly, as an autistic person I can see that the impulse to control derives from a certain 'disorder' or neurosis, even, a lack or a deficiency, as well as a fear of circumstances that are 'out of control.' It is a fear of human beings, too, which is quite often expressed as an elitist disdain for such beings so irrational and illogical as to forever thwart our best laid plans.
Who needs people when you have pure and pristine logic? Why expose yourself to the annoying vaguaries of the endless yes and no of the human world when you can have the unarguable, unquestionable, unanswerable 'yes' of rational certainty?
I don't much care for the Platonic rational control of chance and contingency, since it requires that most of that which makes life worth living be eliminated, or at best reduced to a very austere minimum. I recognize that Plato's view is nuanced and developed over a number of works. Certain themes are, however, clear. There is a certain moral and political hygiene that is so sterilising as to extinguish those human beings who are much less than ideal. I detect a certain fear, not to mention elitist disdain, behind such a temper. People are not fit company to be keeping at all. Having been on the receiving end of human beings at their most wretched more times than I care to remember, I can see where the temper comes from. In fact, human beings don't need to be anywhere near the worst they can be to drive you to distraction. I can guarantee on social media, for instance, if I should post a positive story in search of an affirmative thumbs up, someone will come along and rain all over my parade. I can certainly understand why people with certain ends and ideals would seek a way beyond the interminable yeses and noes of the social world, especially when they consider that their views are for the human betterment.
Despite having suffered more hurts than are anyone's fair share, I remain open to the world and others and don't retire to some Empyrean height, from where I can rain down edicts. By seceding from the company of others you lose so many opportunities for a richly fulfilled life. You risk pain and suffering by making yourself vulnerable. But with the possibility for sorrow comes the possibility for joy. Discard the former, whether out of fear of pain, or plain cowardice in face of uncertainty and vulnerability, and you will lose the latter. And go on to lead a perfectly predictable and boring and pointless life.
As an autistic person who is often at cross-purposes with the demands of everyday living, I know where the fear and the longing for certainty and control comes from. The relations to others can be the most difficult and painful things of all. You need other people in order to be yourself, but people can drive you to despair. People can behave in the most unexpected of ways and rarely are as you would want them to be. You search for connection, only to see your hopes and expectations in respect of others frequently flounder. People can be very disappointing. Over time, you learn to lower your expectations until in the end you have no expectation left, only, at best, private longings that are permanently locked away safe inside your forever aching heart.
I know where the impulse to retreat comes from. You have been so painfully disappointed so many times that you develop the tendency not to ask for what you want, for fear that refusal will destroy the little locked-away hopes and dreams that keep you alive. Even when another person is openly and explicitly offering you the very thing you want, you refuse to reveal your secret longings by making the choice openly; you do everything to avoid rendering yourself vulnerable. You tend not to think that life could ever get so good.
There are risks worth taking. Life can become a cemetery of desires lost through poor self-esteem and lack of confidence, through remembrances of bad experiences past. It's a vicious cycle that can begin early in life and become entrenched as the years go by.
Without a hurt, the heart is hollow. But too many hurts can break the heart beyond repair.
But if you chance your arm, once in a while, you may well succeed and open the doors to a greater joy. If you fail, you fail. But you lose nothing. You just go back to the wretched misery you have normalised through inertia. You'll survive. But have you got the nerve to risk exchanging your saving illusions for the real thing?
